About rfpro

Simulation software

rFpro provides driving simulation software, and Digital-Twins, for the development and testing of autonomous vehicles, ADAS and vehicle dynamics.

rFpro is solely focused on ground-based road-vehicle simulation.

rFpro scales from a desktop workstation, to a full-scale simulator, to a massively parallel real-time test environment that can be shared by multiple OEM and Tier-1 customers in the Cloud, connecting their autonomous driver models and human test drivers.

rFpro accelerates your development, testing and validation of vehicles, vehicle sub-systems, ADAS and autonomous systems, to save money and allow you to bring quality products to market more quickly.

Virtual Test Driving

Through simulation, rFpro allows the introduction of professional test drivers into the model-based engineering process.

All OEMs and T1s have teams of test drivers, who have to wait for prototypes, mules and production-intent vehicles, before assessing them at proving grounds, test facilities and on public road test routes. rFpro involves these drivers much earlier in the engineering process, while the vehicles, subsystems and components being tested are still at the model-based engineering stage.

A large amount of money and time is saved for each design change that can be identified by a test driver before the project reaches the stage where expensive test mules, prototypes or production intent vehicles are created. The earlier a problem is identified, the cheaper it is to fix and the less it delays production.

Vehicle Dynamics Capable

rFpro makes this possible by delivering driving simulator solutions that are fast and accurate enough to simulate vehicle dynamics.

By focusing on speed of response and extreme video bandwidth (being able to run Ultra HD quality graphics at 120 frames per second with minimal latency) rFpro allows driving simulators to be used in highly dynamic situations which means they can now be used to test anything that affects the dynamic behaviour of the vehicle. For example, chassis control systems such as stability control and antilock braking, drivetrain control systems such as traction control and torque vectoring, engine control systems such as hybrid transitions from EV to ICE, and ADAS control systems that affect steering and braking control inputs.

For the autonomous vehicle developer this offers two important benefits:

Firstly, it means that rFpro can be used on a simulator to allow the subjective evaluation of riding as a passenger under the control of your autonomous systems, even replicating the driving dynamics – so you can evaluate how comfortable, how safe, how anxious the passenger feels. rFpro will help you achieving consumer acceptance as well as safety.

Secondly, it means you can add human drivers into autonomous vehicle simulations. Your simulated AV can share the same virtual world as one, or more, human test drivers. At the moment up to fifty human drivers may join an experiment. There is huge value in throwing human drivers at autonomous tests. Humans are unpredictable, we are slightly random, we are never exactly the same twice, we make mistakes. We now know of no better way to provoke new failure modes in autonomous vehicles than by throwing human drivers at simulation.

The best thing is that nobody dies in simulation. You can push your AI to the limit, testing it in complex situations, with real human road users, entirely in simulation, and nobody is hurt when it goes wrong.

The history of rfpro

rFpro started as “rFactor Pro” in 2007 as a project within a Formula 1 team, where performance, speed of response and simulation of the fastest, most dynamic road vehicle on earth was all that mattered. It was this single minded focus that led to the adoption of rFpro by OEMs and T1s for vehicle dynamics simulation. rFpro’s driving simulator solutions are being used by 7 of the top 10 largest OEMs in the world as well as many smaller OEMs and T1s for virtual test programmes of conventional and autonomous vehicles, vehicle subsystems and control systems. Although the engineering cycle for road cars is measured in years, there are now cars on sale today, from the Top 10 OEMs who were early adopters of rFpro technology, whose chassis and drivetrain testing and calibration was started in rFpro in order to reduce costs and minimise delays in the engineering process.

rFpro’s Quality management System has been approved and is compliant with the requirements of ISO9001:2015